The existing cellular networks, such as (Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and IS95, are intended to provide a contagious and continuous coverage, so as to support the high terminal mobility expected from such systems. However, despite careful network design, indoor (in-building) coverage, or the coverage of places with high shadowing attenuation (e.g. tunnels) of such networks is often “patchy”, with “coverage Holes” at best, and no coverage at worst. The reason for the impaired indoor coverage is that the cellular base stations are usually placed outside buildings, higher than the average building heights, to provide large area coverage. Although the signal may be adequate at “street-level”, it is severely attenuated by the building material, reducing the signal power in-building, resulting in the poor converges. Loss of signal power (attenuation) depends on the building material and can be tens of dBs for each wall penetration. The problem is exacerbated in the 3rd generation systems such as Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) and cdma2000, as these new systems have the capability of high data transmission, which results in lower information bit energy (Eb), and much reduced link budget and cell foot-print.
Typical solutions for providing indoor coverage are expensive and involve extensive investment in the cellular network infrastructure and are much more complex in planning and operation. Typical repeater systems contain two antennas, a donor antenna that receives/transmits signals from/to a base station and a server antenna that receives/transmits signals from/to a handset. In typical repeater implementations, the donor and server antennas are either integrated within the repeater, or they are external to the repeater, connecting to the repeater via an RF connector such as a SMA connecter. In addition to the external antenna connections, the repeater also has a power supply input port which is used to supply power from an external source to the repeater.